Chanting USA, USA is offensive to muslims, moslems, etc...

This is a letter that was printed in the Daily Illini, the cmapus newspaper from the University of Illinois. I will not comment too much on this as most know how I feel about this. If muslims find this offensive then they are FREE to leave the United States and take their entire families with them. While they are at it, please take the author of this letter who is not even a professor at the college. Be sure to go to the site and read some of the responses in the comments below the article. USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA!

---

Block-I chant portrays ‘neither patriotism nor remembrance’
By David Green, University Academic Professional
Posted: September 15th, 2010

Daily Illini: The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.


The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.


The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.


David Green,


University Academic Professional

Original letter can be found here.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers